More and more enterprise business applications are offered for use on mobile devices. Customers expect that enterprise software developers will increasingly provide mobile device versions of the business applications, where the business applications were originally developed as desktop applications with consistent access to backend systems. As additional enterprise software developers have begun to provide mobile applications with increased levels of connectivity to backend, centralized systems storing data associated with business processes and applications.
Push technology generally describes a style of Internet-based communication where the request for a given transaction is initiated by the publisher or central server. It is contrasted with pull technology, where the request for the transmission of information is initiated by the receiver or client. Mobile device technologies, such as Apple's Push Notification Service and Research in Motion's (RIM) Blackberry Enterprise Server push notifications, have been developed to provide push notification availability to a larger segment of mobile device users using Apple or RIM's phones and services.
Notification-based business applications are difficult to realize on mobile devices, as push notification solutions can cause performance loss due to increased resource consumption—processor, battery, and network connectivity usage are required to receive constant push notifications. For many business applications, it is not possible to run an application to connect automatically and regularly to a backend system and to receive and make available on-time business notifications at the mobile device. The push notification systems available today provide special instructions and services to enable specific mobile phones (i.e., Apple's iPhone and RIM's Blackberry products) available for instant notifications. These solutions are device-specific and require services provided by a particular service provider.